Adams judge justly slams Trump's DOJ for using case to keep mayor compliant

U.S. District Court Judge Dale Ho’s Wednesday opinion dismissing a major corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams limited the Trump administration’s effort in this instance to use the Justice Department as a political weapon.

It was clear Ho had no choice but to allow the department’s new officials to drop the matter as they wished. As Ho noted in his 78-page opinion, judges under our system don’t get to tell the executive branch whom to prosecute. But the department under Trump urged the judge to let it tank the Adams allegations "without prejudice." That would mean the felony case could return at a later date.

Fortunately, Ho saw through this move and halted it. He got the message based on the officials’ own words that the administration was trying to ensure City Hall’s obedience in the mass deportation of immigrants here illegally by keeping the corruption case hanging over Adams like a sword. Not clearing Adams outright, Ho said, would create the "unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents."

Ho didn’t stop there. He called the "without prejudice" request from the Justice Department "disturbing in its breadth, implying that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities." He correctly noted that is "fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law."

Dropping serious, factually supported charges against Adams regardless of merit, just because they were developed during the last administration, was disturbing by itself. The aftermath raises questions about the willingness of this administration's U.S. attorney’s offices and the FBI to strongly enforce the law in the future against miscreant politicians, as they’re supposed to do.

More broadly, the politicization of the Adams case only compounds the murkiness recent Supreme Court rulings have layered onto official corruption cases, making them more difficult to bring and win. Absent congressional clarification of corruption laws, the public is right to wonder whether elected officials can be held responsible for corrupt acts.

If the FBI hadn’t probed City Hall on several fronts, serious signs of other malfeasance may have gone unexposed. Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned in September amid a probe of nightclub "protection" services owned by his twin brother. The following month, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks and Deputy Mayor Philip Banks III resigned during a probe of a family consulting firm. Other aides had phones seized and houses raided. Some were indicted.

As if the Trump Justice Department’s transactional approach to corruption cases wasn’t odiferous enough, Adams on Wednesday touted and praised a book called "Government Gangsters" that targets "enemies" of the current president.

The author is Kash Patel, who’s now Trump’s FBI director. There's no need to read between the lines of this wormy political deal.